How I Save Republicans From The Chore Of Their Cynicism and The Labors of Their Dissimulation

Not insensitive even to the foul-breathed craphounds who live among us, I worry when I observe that Republicans trod the public stage with little evident joie de vivre, the poor souls’ bearing visibly encumbered, even their posture put upon. Of course I want to help.

You’d think Republicans would be in better humor. They control a paltry one-half a branch of government and yet America is all but Republican World: the wealthy remain extravagantly coddled, corporations barely contribute taxes, subsidies to mega-industries like oil and agriculture continue on, budget deals invariably take hard, vicious whacks at the poor, while Defense and the perks of affluence are spared.

Discretionary spending remains at austerity levels, while infrastructure, education, and joblessness forever go begging. The nation’s highest court recognizes profit-driven corporations as sensitive beings with fragile feelings, and extraordinary rights, a respectfulness toward their feelings, whims and rights you’d die to have (and surely will before you get them), you 47%-dwelling schmuck, you. Good times in the land of cotton.

I’d love to believe it’s not altogether in Republicans’ nature always to be surly, angry at the world and dismissive of thick swatches of the human race, hence all beings not precisely resembling them, even though, in all honesty, for anyone not named St. Francis of Assisi or Mr. Rogers, that is a perfectly fair inference. Let me suggest however, that despite what you may think, Republicans are holding far too much inside them, and it is that at the root of their sallow demeanor.

Yes, there appears no embarrassment and negligible inhibition as they rage against Obama, Democrats, Europe, scientists, economists, environmentalists, contraception, immigrants, the poor, the unemployed…well you know, everybody. True, they are uninhibited enough to unabashedly fling tasteless and contemptible epithets, tell tales that would cause used car salesmen to blush at such brazen dissembling, always, to go robustly bananas with ad hominem calumny and McCarthyite flair directed at their countless enemies. All in the name of grand excremental schoolyard strategery.

However, behaving unbound by scruples or decency isn’t necessarily the free pass to happiness it would appear to be from a safe distance.

True, Republicans can defend shifting the tax burden from the wealthy onto the middle class as rewarding makers and depriving takers of their easy riding. But takers is much too subtle vocabulary for the liking of people whose deepest satisfaction comes from throwing the verbal equivalent of sulfuric acid into their neighbors’ faces. If you don’t believe the pain and suffering of Republican politicians confining themselves to weasel words like takers is immense, that they are not bursting at the seams with bums, scum,vermin, dirty cockroaches and lazy, shiftless, worthless, dependent (fill in blank with ethnic group here) you’re not observing the same Republicans I am.

This sort of self-repression has got to hurt. You think cutting off unemployment benefits to the long-term unemployed is easy? When nothing short of advocating a return of the workhouse can make you truly happy it’s certainly not. Admittedly, when a few Republican politicians suggest, as some have, that impoverished students receiving school lunches should sweep the floors in order to receive them, or that child labor was unfortunate collateral damage of the Progressive Era and not such a bad thing, as some have said, well, now we’re getting somewhere. But such liberating expressions of the heart are few and far between.

To put it harshly, Republicans will never, and they know they will never, get elected saying what they truly believe, and this is a state of affairs, a permanent condition so absolutely pitiable it should elicit sympathy even from progressives with an ounce of compassion (I have about an ounce exactly it turns out), Of course, preventing as many people from voting as possible in a system of government where leaders of the country are, you know, elected, certainly is a resourceful innovation, especially if the majority thinks your ideas are really stupid and rotten.

But returning to the humanitarian, do you really believe having to tell people you’re all about reforming Medicare or fixing Social Security doesn’t make you gag like you’ve swallowed a bowl of poison? You don’t think bantering so euphemistically isn’t damaging to vital internal organs when what you really believe, and what you really mean to say, is: I’ll kill those motherfuckers if it’s the last thing I ever do. I wish Medicare had never been invented. And if I could vote to abolish Social Security sixty-seven times by god I would. That the two of them have proved grandly successful, so effective, so efficient, so cherished and belovedby all but a minor few makes me want to puke every time I think about it.

You just want to hug your Republican friends and tell them, go ahead, unencumber yourself, shout it out loud to the world: Healthcare should go only to those able to afford it. It’s a privilege. If it costs too much for millions to have, that is God’s will, or the decision of the market, more or less the same thing.If people die so be it. Frankly I couldn’t give a shit. They should work harder and aspire higher. That’s life. Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Nothing about healthcare to keep you breathing long enough to have them.

Yes, Republicans say a lot of foul things on television. You’d be in the foulest possible mood too if it were you holding all of that in.

I’ll admit, Republicans probably do get some satisfaction laughing up their sleeves promoting trickle down economics, low taxes for the rich, big government for the selected few, penny-pinching for all the rest. At least when you’re shoveling trickle down, you can think to yourself: Don’t hold your breath waiting, sucker. To paraphrase wit and economics icon J.K. Galbraith, supply side is the promise that if you feed the donkey enough, a little will drop out his behind in the end for you. That thought has to give Republicans a private smile.

By and large though, repression, like depression and hypertension is a silent killer. Republicans talk a lot about liberty, and yet they lack even the simple, basic freedom to say out loud what they’re really thinking; their electability is dependent upon concealing what they actually believe. In your heart, you know feudalism and aristocracy are right.

Pat Buchanan, he’s free. Old Pat doesn’t pretend he’s offended by border crossings on any legal grounds or economic ignorance. He just doesn’t want the country turning all brown. And he comes right out and says it. Sleeps well, eats better and stays more regular than your average Republican euphemizer no doubt.

For the rest, it can’t be much fun pretending you despise everyone for grandly philosophical reasons or you furrow your brow in the evening over the federal budget, when you really just think great chunks of the American people are indolent, defective, thieving, barely human detritus.